L'academie Diplomatique

Greetings from Vienna!

The past week has, once again, been a whirlwind! Settling in one place for three weeks does mean that the schedule is a lot more regulated. A normal day is something as follows: sleep through breakfast (its 7:30-8:30 AM!), wake up, shower, eat in my room (grocery stores are a blessing), go to lectures for three to four hours, have a four course lunch (delicious, Lenoir/AXO should take notes), email/read/research for an hour until about 3, at which point is museum time! Vienna has a million things to offer, and even though I’ve been here now for about four days, I feel as though I have only licked the tip of the iceberg!

The trip from Pristina to Kosovo was nothing short of awestrucking. It wasn’t that anything fascinating happened but that in two hours of a plane ride (really close to one hour of air time) I arrived in the Western World. Yes, geographically Kosovo is a part of Europe, but it is worlds and years apart in terms of development and modernization. I didn’t realize how dusty and travesty-stricken Pristina was until I arrived in Vienna. Now, after reflection, the big dust piles, harsh air, and vibrancy stick out like sore thumbs but I hardly noticed them while I was in the country. Pristina is a very vibrant and young (the average age is 24.3) city. Vienna is extremely more laid back and easy to navigate. The area of town we are in (since we are at the Diplomatic Academy) is nice and quiet and clean. And yet the word “clean” is such an understatement, there were piles of garbage that littered the streets of Pristina, there is no such thing in Vienna!

The museums have been nothing short of fantastic, and even a walk into town or around the neighborhood yields beautiful sights and buildings. I have, of course, already been to Zara and other wonderful stores, which were completely absent in the Western Balkans, its amazing to see the shift in globalization. Wednesday, being my birthday, meant that I got to explore a lot of the city (after class of course) and the sun was shining and there was a nice breeze! Some how, though, I feel as though I will never have the time to explore all of Wien! While we never made it to a discotheque officially, I spent the majority of the day dancing and, essentially, creating a dance party with myself and the entire city of Vienna. Not too shabby if I do say so myself.

Class has been a much slower pace since we arrived in Vienna. Since we aren’t meeting with new organizations every day, I actually have a chance to try to digest all that I learned and absorbed over the last three weeks. We have spent a lot of time on the epistemology of nationalism and the history of Balkan conflicts. I have had the chance to hone in my research and now intend to focus on the OSCE’s current programs for education reform and how those hold up to the past goals of the organization. I am really excited about it because it will give me a chance to discuss the “status” of education reform in 2009, something that has really been troubling me the last two weeks.

In other news, thank you all for the birthday wishes, it really means so much to me. I am heading off to Budapest, Hungary for the weekend (even though it will not mean a new stamp in my passport) and hope to have many more stories to tell.

With love,
Lauren